To be clear, I use the word ‘maybe’ in the headline with a smirk. The political left would happily fundraise over your corpse if it would advance their agenda. Your death as a result of progressive policy is a win for them, even if you were a Democrat voter. They may not need you anymore, which should be of some concern.
Elections being the way they are these days, why care about a body you can replace with a bit of code in a place where there are so many losing a few hardly matters? And of what danger do we speak?
The winter of 2022. Deliberate energy policy decisions at the state and federal level nearly cost tens of thousands of New Yorkers (perhaps more) their lives.
In bone-dry language, the report “Inquiry into Bulk-Power System Operations During December 2022 Winter Storm Elliott,” explains how the gas pipeline network in New York nearly failed last Christmas when temperatures plummeted during the bomb cyclone. Freeze-related production declines, combined with soaring demand from power plants, homes, and businesses, led to shortages of gas throughout the Northeast. The lack of gas, as well as mechanical and electrical issues, resulted in an “unprecedented” loss of electric generation capacity totaling some 90,000 megawatts. While the lack of electricity was dangerous, the possibility of a loss of pressure in the natural gas network should send a bone-chilling shiver through the sacroiliac of every politician and bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., New York and the Northeast.
The report explains that if the gas pipeline system had failed, the recovery process in New York City would have taken “months.” In addition, the property damage due to damaged water pipes in homes and buildings would likely have caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage.
Left unsaid in the report is that the collapse of the gas grid during the period in which temperatures in New York City stayed below freezing would have caused a calamity unlike any other in U.S. history. The cold that lasted from December 23 to December 28 could have resulted in thousands, or even tens of thousands, of deaths. The damage from burst water pipes would have rendered untold numbers of residential and office buildings in New York City unusable.
This was not the first such close call, and the current trajectory suggests they will get closer and likely become a reality, and that appears to be the point.
First, they scare you by suggesting catastrophic climate catastrophes. New York City Underwater from Sea Level Rise. They insist on a program of changes – despite never getting a single prediction correct – that will create climate disaster. Anyone who pushes back gets labeled a denier, called names, pilloried out of their profession, or canceled online (a scheme used for every other lousy idea advanced by the political left).
2022 was just last year. Energy policy continues its Marist March. Shut down coal, end fossil fuels, no nuclear, on the path to an all-electric future lacking production and capacity to meet even essential needs.
A friend who works for the federal government in Washington, D.C., and is familiar with the FERC/NERC report told me last week that the loss of gas in New York City would have required evacuating most of the people in the city. Let that soak in for a minute. New York City has roughly 8.5 million residents. Evacuating even 25% of Gotham’s residents during extreme cold would have required a herculean effort. But even assuming such an evacuation could be accomplished, imagine how the country would handle 2 million displaced New Yorkers who could not return to their homes for months. And while you’re at it, imagine if those 2 million New Yorkers had their homes soaked by broken water pipes.
In short, the U.S. narrowly averted both a humanitarian and economic crisis that could have put the country’s economy into a tailspin. Imagine America’s financial capital in such disarray that money center banks and Wall Street could not function because their office buildings didn’t have heat.
New York City may have survived the Winter of 2022, but can it survive any of them before the mystical benchmark of 2030? And that’s just one city. Add everyone around it up and down the Eastern Seaboard.
It sounds like a joke, but it’s not. You are the carbon they are trying to reduce.
